Dispatches From Whitcomb Street

plums in rosemary honey

Taking a cue from Food in Jars and from Mrs. Beeton, I’ve been interested in preserving plums whole for a while now. It was too late last summer when I first started thinking about them, so I spent the entire winter dreaming of whole plums. “This ice cream is great…wouldn’t a plum preserved in honey be nice on it?” “This cake is so boring…I wish we had some plums preserved in honey.” “What does this pork roast need? My kingdom for a plum preserved in honey!”

What I’m saying is, plums preserved in honey have been on my mind lately.

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plum torte

Plum season!

I bought a couple pounds of beautiful little Italian prune plums at the market yesterday—some of them are destined for jam, some of them for plums preserved in honey. And some are for eating fresh.

Here they are in Marian Burros’ plum torte, which has been printed in the Times like every year for two decades. It is very, very, very good—the cake is light and tender-crisp, studded with jammy, concentrated plums halves. The crust is shattering-light, with an amazing browned butter aroma. It’s almost too pretty to eat* 

*Note: But you should definitely eat it.

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